Rootbeer Richie and the Reveille Is the Band Colorado Needs

Rootbeer Richie has performed around the country, but nothing compares to the Mile High City.

“It’s something about the energy in Denver,” he says. “It’s a community in the music scene. … People in bands go to see other bands and root for other bands. And that’s a beautiful thing, right? It doesn’t really happen in too many music scenes.”

The local music scene certainly stands firm behind his band, Rootbeer Richie and the Reveille, which has been making fans since coming together in 2021. And while Rootbeer is from the South — as you can tell by his charming touch of a drawl and Cajun-infused music — the Reveille has become a Denver staple in a short time. After all, the Reveille makes that type of boot-stomping, rock-and-rolling, bluesy music that Coloradans in particular appreciate, and even hometown heroes like Nathaniel Rateliff have taken note: Rootbeer Richie and the Reveille recorded instrumentation for the band’s debut album, Never Needed Me, at Rateliff’s home in 2024.

The band’s strong support is exemplified by how it keeps playing bigger and grander venues, from performing ahead of Bernie Sanders’s rally last March to opening for Jack White at Mission Ballroom. And soon, the Reveille will be having its fifth-annual Mile High Mardi Gras Mambo on Saturday, February 14, at the Ogden Theatre, where the band will be joined by Ghost Funk Orchestra, the Mañanas and DOGTAGS.

The first Mambo happened at the hi-dive; as with Rateliff and other Colorado successes like Big Head Todd, the band has a long history at that venue. Rootbeer worked at the club when he first moved here, and it’s where the band had its first Denver show — for the Underground Music Showcase, no less. The Reveille had performed just once before that, for a honky-tonk festival at a roadhouse in a lonesome part of New Mexico; the spot was called Cold Beer, simply because of those same words on a large sign out front, the only sign of human life along a desolate highway. While the band had raucous memories of the gig, it had no video to submit to UMS.

“Matty Clark helped me out,” Rootbeer says of the hi-dive owner. “He said we could play hi-dive at midnight, the second UMS was over.” So Rootbeer reached out to the festival and said he would love to have the concert be an official part of UMS. Sure enough, the fest agreed.

“It was definitely a great way to hit the scene,” he grins. “Made a little bit of a splash.”

Those who have seen the band know to expect a rowdy and unforgettable time, where rock, funk and blues converge with zydeco and Cajun stylings. “I call it swamp pop, but it’s not really like traditional Louisiana swamp pop,” Rootbeer says.

The sonics stem from the vocalist’s roots. “Growing up in a very Cajun family, music is around a lot,” he explains. “Dancing is important. Family functions, having old zydeco music, having old swamp-pop music, having Fats Domino on the jukebox, everybody’s two-stepping together — that’s just a part of it.”

Rootbeer was raised around Louisiana — Lafayette, Lake Charles, Shreveport, Bossier City. He moved to Baton Rouge to attend Louisiana State University. But “I was enrolled in school a lot more than I was at school,” he admits with a chuckle.

One of his distractions is entirely understandable. “Well, there is a live tiger on campus,” he says. “Mike the Tiger’s enclosure is gorgeous…this huge area with waterfalls and all these caves around for him. Where I’d park, I’d have to walk past the enclosure to get to class. So there I am, you know, a little stoned, riding my skateboard down the way, and it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s a live tiger.’ The amount of times I would get to school on time to go to class, and then just sit in front of the tiger for, like, two hours…”

Smoke seshes by a tiger enclosure weren’t the only extracurricular activities in which Rootbeer indulged; he was also playing in several bands. Perhaps the most salient lesson he learned during his two-and-a-half-year stint at LSU was that music was his calling. Then he became friends with Dirty Few, a Denver group, which encouraged him to tour the West with one of those bands.

“We booked a tour out to Denver, and I just fell in love with it,” he says. “The energy of the city, the music scene: The vibes were just incredible. We were originally planning to move the project to Austin, Texas, and then when we got back from the tour, I was like, ‘We’ve got to move to Denver.'”

Rootbeer made his way out to Denver in 2014 and lived here a little over a year, playing guitar in groups such as Colfax Speed Queen. But eventually, Rootbeer recalls, he contracted “the homesick blues,” and made his way south to New Orleans.

“I was having a good time living in New Orleans,” he says, “but I just kept flying up to Denver. In the weirdest way, Colorado feels more like home to me.”

It was 2020, “the perfect time to move,” he remembers. “So I moved back up here, and it’s been no looking back ever since. I don’t know what it is, probably just a combination of Colorado in general — the mountains, the weather, the nature — and then when you add in the incredible music scene of Denver….It’s different.”

While New Orleans has a “really cool underground hardcore scene,” he notes that it also has an “Achilles heel” — the tourist industry that forms a silo for musicians. “Everyone wants to hear the old-school New Orleans music that they love,” he says, admitting that he’s also heavily into such stylings. “Of course, there’s plenty of great original groups that are coming out of New Orleans…and house bands playing old-school rhythm-and-blues and soul classics. That is the lifeblood of the scene.”

However, that also makes the scene oversaturated, and it’s hard to choose a show when there are dozens and dozens every night. “I feel like people in Denver are diehards in the scene, going to every show,” he says. “And then in New Orleans, there’s just so much going on all the time. There’s so much going on in Denver also, but it’s more of a tight-knit thing.”

When Rootbeer returned to Denver, he had a “whole catalog of stuff ready to go,” he recalls. He reached out to friends in the music scene, “and we built out this star-studded lineup of Reveille, players from different groups and stuff like that.

“It’s just a testament to the Denver music scene, of people being like, ‘Oh, you’re doing this? I want to do that, too.’ Wanting to collaborate and play with each other. That is really how the ball got rolling.”

The band’s name, meanwhile, was inspired by the LSU school paper, The Reveille. Rootbeer’s wife suggested it, and he dug not only the alliteration, but the meaning. “The definition is to wake up with horns,” Rootbeer says. “That’s perfect: We’re energetic, it’s all going to be upbeat, dancing music. It’s going to be raising people up.”

The lineup has changed through the years, as it does with bands. (Rootbeer officially changed his name, too.) Rootbeer Richie and the Reveille currently has seven members: Rootbeer (vocals), Paul Simmons (guitar), Phil Hutchinson (bass), Mark Whitrock (keys), Nick Berlin (drums), Nate Larkin (tenor sax) and Alex Snyder (baritone sax). Together, they’ve achieved a sound that’s somehow both familiar and unique; you can instantly recognize a Reveille track. Aside from the technical prowess, the recordings also capture the group’s raw energy, prioritizing grit over polish.

“It’s the little subtleties, in my opinion, that make a lot of tracks,” Rootbeer says. “A little squeak on a string from sliding up into a chord, or you might bend a note a little too high, or the bass slides into a note instead of jumping directly to it. Those little parts are what make up the energy of a track and make it feel alive.”

While Rootbeer is enjoying the moment, he isn’t afraid to admit he’s hoping for recognition. “Even the most hardcore underground punk kids want to see their project grow,” he says, with a nod to his early punk interest. “But more than just trying to reach some level of notoriety, I just want to help people have a good time. That’s always been my goal with every set: help someone get out of their own way for 45 minutes to an hour, and in that time period not worry about all the crazy shit going on in the world, not worry about rent, not worry about all the things that are just constantly weighing down on us. Have fun. Let loose. Dance around, just have that moment of reprieve. That’s kind of been my whole goal for it the whole time.”

So the fifth-annual Mile High Mardi Gras Mambo is coming just in time: We all could use a moment of revelry and community.

Each year, the party has grown, moving from the hi-dive to the Marquis, from the Bluebird to the Gothic. “It’s basically like a stationary Mardi Gras parade,” Rootbeer explains. “When you think about Mardi Gras, I think a lot of people get lost in the sugar, boobs and beads, the celebration, the debauchery. But there is also a level of the community getting brought together in the celebration. So I always try to make a point at the Mambo to bring that up to the crowd, that we’re all from different walks of life, we all have these little differences, but look how well we’re all getting along. We are a community.”

And every time, people in that community show up with more fanfare and celebratory costumes. After the shows, Rootbeer will hang outside, watching people leave the packed clubs with steam rising from their bodies as the cold air hits, with “a real happy glaze across their faces,” he says.

It’s not just a taste of Louisiana, but the warmth of community that’s needed here and now. That’s what Rootbeer Richie and the Reveille delivers, and that’s why Denver shows up.

“The Denver support has been incredible,” Rootbeer says. “It’s truly remarkable. Our shows keep getting bigger and bigger, and we’re playing bigger and bigger rooms. And I’m flabbergasted. Every time we get on stage and I see a room full of people excited to see us, that y’all chose to spend your hard-earned money to come see us do our thing, the novelty is not lost on me. It’s really something special.”

Rootbeer Richie and the Reveille’s Mile High Mardi Gras Mambo, 7 p.m. Saturday, February 14, Ogden Theatre, 935 East Colfax Avenue. Tickets are available at ogdentheatre.com.